So, there's something I have to tell you.

I've used that phrase a lot recently. To my 96-year-old mother, to an audience at a gig, to people I've never met.

Due to circumstance, I have to tell them the "something". I've become more adept at it and have found that it's best to reveal the ending first.

The end of the story is I'm going to be fine. 

The beginning is I have cancer. If you open with that, no-one ever believes you're going to be fine. Cancer is a trigger word for just about everyone because your own body turning against you is a horrible thing and, for many, the course of the disease is ghastly, and for many it's fatal.

That's why my cancer so far has been kind of odd.

I've been fine. Right now, I'm completely fine.

Tom's party and a massaman curry

It really began back in December, at Tom's party. My friend Tom has been celebrating his 40th birthday every few years for quite a while now and it's a good party. But, as usual, the bar was free and there was no food.

At about 9:30pm, three takeaway containers of Thai food turned up. I'm starving, and I snuffle down massaman beef like a dog woofing up Pal.

A few minutes later, I'm choking and retching. Bad look at the party.

My wife, Joanne, watches this and says, "That's not good," and she doesn't just mean my eating habits. She's referring to me hanging onto a parking pole outside the pub trying to swallow. She's not a doctor, but is a better doctor than most, and so she refers me to her sister's endoscopy clinic to get a gastroscopy.

Everyone's thinking it's an old man reflux kind of condition. I have a fun conversation with the anaesthetist about Taylor Swift and the next thing I know my eyes are opening and across the room I can see my wife, my son, my sister-in-law, and the gastro doctor.

The doctor comes over.

Not expecting that. Can't take it in.

I'm post a general anaesthetic, so I head home. It's early evening, I've got to get up and do breakfast radio in the morning, so I head to bed and fall straight to sleep.

I get up at 3:45am. As I'm driving to work, it's like I start to remember a dream. It doesn't quite make sense. After the radio shift, I ring Joanne and say, "This might sound like a stupid question, but I have cancer, right?"

Everyone's cancer is different

Immediately it was meetings with oncologists, radiologists, and surgeons and, in early January, I started five weeks of chemotherapy and radiation. (For reasons that must be obvious, I don't like to use the more common term — radiotherapy.)

And this is where my cancer and treatment differ from many others.